Today in Obama guilt-by-association

BigGovernment.com is currently touting a post by Matthew Vadum -- who has a history of overheatedattacks on Obama -- profiling the Right's latest target: Obama White House political affairs director Patrick Gaspard.

"Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political director in New York," Vadum writes, working under then-state leader and current ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis. "Obama's statement that he's barely aware of ACORN's problems is nothing short of ridiculous, especially so because Patrick Gaspard was a political director for ACORN New York."

Curiously missing from Vadum's post are the exact dates that Gaspard was political director for ACORN New York -- he states only that it was "years before." That omission tells us that we can presume it was many years before.

Nevertheless, Vadum takes this opportunity to ramp up the crazy: "With Gaspard at work in the White House, Lewis might as well be speaking to President Obama through an earpiece as he goes about his daily business ruining the country." Manchuriancandidate, anyone?

Apparently taking his cues from Glenn Beck, Vadum also throws in the usual guilt-by-association conspiracy-mongering between ACORN and SEIU.

Meanwhile, WorldNetDaily is claiming that it has "unearthed!" Obama's "twisted ACORN roots." Actually, there's no new information in this article -- it's all compiled from previous reports. And some of those claims are false or misleading:

WND claims that "in 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. " In fact, as Obama's Fight the Smears states, Project Vote was not operated by ACORN at that time. The article includes a screenshot of the Fight the Smears page containing that statement but, strangely, it's not included in the article itself.

WND claims that in 1995 Obama "sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal 'motor voter' law," failing to mention that ACORN's fellow plaintiffs in the case also included the Department of Justice and the League of Women Voters. Further, Obama was not the only attorney representing ACORN, and he was not a lead attorney in the case but, rather, an associate.

WND claims that William Ayers "selected Obama to be the first chairman of the board of the Annenberg Challenge." In fact, the New York Times reported that "according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama's appointment."

WND claims that "newspaper evidence shows Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda." In fact, the Aug. 23 WND article that's cited to back up this claim also quotes a New Party official as stating that to his knowledge Obama was not a member of the New Party "in any practical way."

WND cited a "congressional investigation" from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform claiming that "ACORN was found to be rife with criminal activity," but doesn't note that the report was issued only by the Republicans on the committee, a clue to its partisan nature. WND also uncritically repeats a claim in the report that "ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds" -- which is false.

On December 7, President-elect Donald Trump named Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Media should take note of Pruitt’s climate science denial, his deep ties to the energy industries he will be charged with regulating, and his long record of opposition to EPA efforts to reduce air and water pollution and combat climate change.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked -- or considered -- nearly a dozen people who have worked in right-wing media, including talk radio, right-wing news sites, Fox News, and conservative newspapers, to fill his administration. And Trump himself made weekly guest appearances on Fox for a number of years while his vice president used to host a conservative talk radio show.